Let’s do the wacky metafictional zombie film right here! That is the rationale behind this unassuming knockabout comedy-farce - in which more or less everyone gets splattered with blood and bodily fluids - from Michel Hazanavicius, chosen to open this year’s Cannes film festival, and so starting things off with some easygoing laughs. (A very bizarre experience, considering that audiences at the opening gala had just watched a live video-link address from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Zelenskiy, however, is a comedy veteran in his former TV showbusiness career - and might well approve.)
This is in fact a remake of the cult Japanese movie One Cut of the Dead by Shin’ichirô Ueda, from 2017, and this remake is itself therefore about a remake, thus adding another metafictional level to the proceedings. The result is something appreciably sillier and more eccentric than the original, with some gags about patronising and stereotypical European attitudes to the Japanese which make it broader still, and sometimes it’s a tiny bit self-conscious in unintentional ways. It’s certainly far from the sophistication and gloss for which Hazanavicius became famous ten years ago with his silent pastiche The Artist; it’s closer to his spy spoof series OSS 117. But it’s likeable and goofy.
